Reprinted from The Daily Star

BOSTON — In today’s culture of political divisions and religious strife, Christian Scientists spoke at their church’s annual meeting of “a new spirit” emerging, which is calling forth the best in people across denominational and national lines.

A loaded question on Yahoo!Answers.com invited a wide range of answers including the one below. Given the blunter aspects of social media, it’s not always helpful to respond to these things, but it was in this case.

[Posted answer:]

“For me, as I read the answers below, the real question is, Why is it that Christian Science has been and is still so dear to my heart? I’ve been a church member most of my life. I’ve read and considered all the criticisms raised here, and many more. But for me, the reality of God’s presence and love as Jesus taught it is at the heart of Christian Science, and it’s been a source of light and meaning that’s hard to imagine living without.

For me, too, the practice of Christian healing isn’t reducible to a “rejection” of modern medicine—there’s so much more to it. I’ve seen and experienced God’s love in so many practical ways—including being healed many times and witnessing healings in others’ lives—that I can’t dismiss these effects as “nature running its course,” placebo effect, mind-over-matter, or any of the other common put-downs for what can’t be explained by clinical models. Which is not to say that I’m the best example of a Christian Scientist—far from it. I’ve led an ordinary and less than perfect human life. But what the Christian Science church has helped me do, is to take seriously the teachings of Christ Jesus—to follow him more sincerely—reforming my character to some extent and making me, I hope, a better person. It also shines God’s comfort and forgiveness into the darkest corners of my life where my shortcomings would otherwise haunt and burn.

I’ve found Christian Science to be genuinely Christian, not in terms of creeds and dogmas, which we may not share in all the traditional ways, but in terms of the great spiritual core at the heart of Jesus’ life, teachings, sacrifice on the cross, and resurrection from death. The Master’s humanity opens our eyes to the tremendous reality he saw—a God who is Love itself—and to what we are as God’s image. I’d think this spiritual perspective—and the healing power that accompanies it—deserves at least an honest hearing as an expression of serious Christianity, but I realize this has to be earned by the lives we lead and the spirit we express.

Diane R. Hanover

(member of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Tucson, and currently serving as Christian Science Committee on Publication for Arizona)

The star shines for everyone

It was just another birth, wasn’t it? That baby born to an unwed mother in a village at the edge of the Roman Empire. Nothing for the temples and palaces to take notice of, transfixed as they were by the hard glare of empire and commerce and the trappings of civilization.

And yet, this birth would move the world.

Why did the power brokers and gatekeepers of the age miss what was taking place? Or, in the case of King Herod, attempt to kill what they didn’t understand?

A few wakeful shepherds responded. They heard what others didn’t, a song of angels: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” A light was dawning, far greater than anything people had ever known or even imagined. It began to work a change in human hearts, a revolution of goodness and love still going on.

How often today do we overlook or try to quell what matters most to the welfare of humanity, the things that give meaning? Some say that all religion, including Christianity, is irrelevant, obsolete, outdated in the face of advances in physical science, and losing ground. People of various faiths or no faith at all may sometimes wonder themselves at the darkness when they see houses of worship no longer in use — or what can be worse, failing to live up to their highest ideals.

And yet, the meaning of Bethlehem is for all humanity — for Christians and non-believers and the faithful of other religions. It’s the meeting point of east and west, the promise of God’s goodness, coming quietly in the midst of darkness with tremendous moral and spiritual authority. “When it’s Christmas, we’re all of us magi,” the late Joseph Brodsky, a Russian Jewish poet and émigré to this country during the Soviet era, put it. Christ Jesus’ conviction about the worth of everyone as children of a loving God sent shock waves through the ancient world that still reverberate today.

What could be more relevant and needed today than this spiritual light, that pierces the darkness of evil, life by life, with the transforming power of God? “Midnight foretells the dawn,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Her still-revolutionary book, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” upends sectarian faith with a call to fully understand God. She asked, “Is the wise man of today believed, when he beholds the light which heralds Christ’s eternal dawn and describes its effulgence?” Who is believed in your church, or mine, when the divine light and Love breaks through a hardened heart, softens character, redeems a life from sin, heals the sick?

To follow the path of goodness that Christmas points to, sets us on a course that much of the world still disdains or overlooks. And yet, something greater and more powerful than all the popular assumptions of the day is at work. “Herod reigns but the stronger he is, the more sure, the more certain the wonder,” as Joseph Brodsky saw. A “Spirit that’s Holy” for all of us to discover in ourselves and each other: “you stare / skyward, and it’s right there: a star.”

This spiritual light transcends even religious boundaries.

Van Driessen is a member of the Christian Science Committee on Publication for New York. The poem quoted is “December 24, 1971” by Joseph Brodsky.

Is human experience limited to what can be measured with scientific instruments? If not, what is the nature of reality? A Herald column (published Sept. 23) raised these and other issues that thinking people, religious and non-religious alike, have wrestled with through the ages. As a Christian Scientist, I agree that questions so important need answers grounded in reason and practical experience.

More than a century ago, as sociologist Emile Durkheim gathered data to support his theory that religion is the product of human rather than divine activity, religious leader Mary Baker Eddy sought evidence for a “scientific” Christianity based on spiritual law. Eddy viewed the unmatched life and teachings of Jesus Christ as the supreme example of divine truth. But she

agreed with Durkheim that believing wasn’t enough. As she wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The hour has struck when proof and demonstration, instead of opinion and dogma, are summoned to the support of Christianity…”

Eddy felt that Christians need to live and demonstrate—not merely preach—Jesus’ teachings by following in some measure his example of healing sickness and sin.

For her, genuine Christian healing wasn’t “supernatural,” a matter of praying for miracles, or even “having enough faith,” as one might have in a placebo. As she understood it, turning to God in prayer for healing, as Jesus’ disciples had, involves deepening of character, genuine moral uprising, spiritual growth in grace and understanding, the purifying of a heart in communion with God.

What was the result? In Eddy’s day, William James, a leading secular philosopher and trained physician, said of the healings that were occurring: “I assuredly hold no brief for any of these healers… But their facts are patent and startling…”

More recently, a rigorous “Empirical Analysis of Medical Evidence in Christian Science Testimonies of Healing, 1969-1988” published by the denomination examined more than 10,000 instances of physical healing in published accounts. Some 2,337 of these comprised significant healings of medically diagnosed conditions, involving hundreds of specialists, hospitals, x-rays,

and follow-up examinations, including 222 cases given terminal or life-threatening prognoses by physicians.

Such healings have often been dismissed as “obviously” impossible—the fantasy of deluded believers—or as examples of some as-yet-unexplained power of the human mind. To this day, objective examination of prayer and religious healing by physical scientists remains infrequent and problematic.

Yet these healings happened. Even in this technological era, it’s hard to brush aside so many experiences. As a Christian Scientist wrote in a church publication, denial and disbelief “can’t erase the simple, striking fact of healing, often in defiance of medical expectation, in so many thousands of people’s lives.”

Of course, a list of conditions healed doesn’t illumine the individual human encounter with the power of God, divine Love. The practice of healing is humbling, and no thoughtful person would say that authentic Christianity is easy. Christian Scientists are deeply conscious of how much more we have to learn about this power and practice of Love and how it heals.

Still, such healing has tremendous meaning, not only for Christian Scientists but for humanity—for understanding who and what we are as human beings. Are we just transient biological packages, or is there more to each of us, an irreducible spiritual identity at our core? As the Book of Job declares, “There is a spirit in man.” The great breakthroughs of spiritual inspiration that have moved humanity forward haven’t necessarily fit what people at the time considered explicable in material terms—and still don’t today.

Diane R. Hanover is a lifelong Christian Scientist, raised in Tucson, where she serves an appointment to represent the branch Churches of Christ, Scientist, in Arizona.

Boston, MA — When Christian Scientists convened in Boston, Massachusetts, Monday, June 6, for the annual meeting of their denomination, they faced a question that many mainline Christian churches also confront: can church be relevant today?

Their perspective on this question—as on just about everything else—runs counter to the popular narrative. “There’s a universal hunger for the heartfelt experience of God’s saving power,” said Margaret Rogers, chairwoman of the five-member lay board of directors of the Church of Christ, Scientist, which has its worldwide headquarters in Boston. “The demand,” she said, is for a church “that is vibrant with unselfed love and actively engaged in authentic Christian healing for humanity.”

For most Christian Scientists, this doesn’t seem to mean better outreach or new ministries and programs. It means drilling down on the thing they feel they bring to the world: spiritual healing, based on the teachings of Christ Jesus, that is expected to be both humane in spirit and effective in results. “We pray,” explained another director, Allison W. Phinney, “because prayer aligns us with how things really work. It lets us see and feel more of the immense good and the divine Love that’s actually here for us and for humanity.”

Founded 137 years ago by religious leader Mary Baker Eddy, the Christian Science Church is a Christian denomination based on the Bible. While relatively small in numbers, the denomination has branch churches in more than 60 countries and has had an outsized impact on Christian thought by its insistence that God’s goodness brings not only salvation from sin, but healing of illness and suffering.

The group’s diversity is seen among some of the new officers announced at the meeting. The new church president is Annu Matthai of Bangalore, India. The new First Reader—who conducts Sunday worship and Wednesday testimony meetings at The Mother Church in Boston—is Louis E. Benjamin of Hillcrest, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The new Second Reader is Diane Uttley Marrapodi of Forest Hill, Maryland, USA. Many church members travelled to Boston for Monday’s proceedings, while more followed the meetings live online.

The theme of this year’s meeting—“Church: ‘healing and saving the world’”—comes from Mary Baker Eddy’s view that Christ Jesus’ original Christianity has deep relevance for the world and its future, and that church must be a practical force for good in daily lives, bringing hope and spiritual progress for humanity. One small symbol of this is the planned renewal of the Christian Science plaza in Boston’s Back Bay. The outdoor spaces surrounding The Mother Church will be updated to better benefit the community as an environmentally sustainable oasis in the midst of the city. A longer-term commitment of the denomination has been publication of The Christian Science Monitor, an international news outlet providing daily and weekly news, online and in print—news that is intended to bring light, rather than heat, to the important issues of the day.

Members at the meeting reported on activities in their regions, as well as provided examples of healing from around the world. Christian Scientists from around the world, including Arizona, attended this year’s meeting.

Members of the Church of Christ, Scientist, gathered in Boston for the 2015 Annual Meeting of their denomination.